Sometimes you see a picture in a news bulletin .. and it sticks with you for the rest of the day(and probably will for a lot longer). Inspite of all the horrors we see in the news today, this was one such picture I saw today – no child should have to go through this! Very disturbing!

Inspite of being in Iraq, this girl looks almost ‘Indian’ to me from a typical Indian school – except for the surrounding settings.

I guess it shows that as human beings, we will empathise will people all over the world – inspite of the divisive forces of evil.

I predict this year, Mobile Ajax will become much more common – although we not call it ‘Mobile Ajax’ – actually any full browser app could be potentially Mobile Ajax application and the iPhone UI will lead to developers adopting Mobile Ajax(and thereby benefiting the industry as a whole especially more mass market solutions like the Opera platform)

A year on from its introduction (with 3 billion page views and 10 million users), Opera Mini has transformed the Mobile Web experience for all of us and it is truly an OpenGardens experience. Truly as fantastic achievement! The full press release is on the Opera Site and below

Oslo, Norway – 26 January 2007

This week Opera Software celebrates the one-year anniversary of Opera Mini. Within its first year, Opera Mini has changed the way millions of people access and view the Web on their mobile phone. Designed to work with almost any mobile phone, Opera Mini is available free from www.operamini.com.

“This is a celebration for our users,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Thanks to the more than 10 million people who have downloaded and used Opera Mini, we’ve changed the way users and mobile operators think about the mobile Web. Because of the tremendous grassroots support, Opera Mini is now a movement.”

Opera Mini lets you take the Web with you. Instead of limited WAP content, you are free to browse the Web the same way you would at home on your laptop or desktop computer. You can use Opera Mini to post pictures to MySpace, search the Web using Yahoo!, shop on Amazon or check Gmail.

“People want to communicate with friends, read their favorite blogs and check email; it’s not sufficient to offer them limited WAP content,” said Ajit Jaokar, CEO of FutureText and author of ‘Open Gardens: The innovator’s guide to the Mobile data industry’. “At the same time, offering full Web access to subscribers drives more revenue for the mobile operator. It becomes a win-win proposition for everyone.”

Firstly, let me apologise for not having written much recently. I was travelling both before and after the holidays and had a load of personal things to catch up on. The Xmas break is a great time to step back and take stock of your personal and professional situation, away from the usual frenetic day-to-day activities of life.

So now, after 10 years at Tao I’ve decided it is time to move on. Tao has mature and proven technology and a very exciting future, but personally I’m now more interested in how the new generation of internet technologies and social media can be harnessed. This has always been the vision of this blog.

Therefore, I’m looking for new opportunities to work in this space, in the UK or elsewhere. If you read this blog regularly you’ll know my views on a number of things, and you can find more information about my experience on LinkedIn. I’ve got very broad as well as deep technical experience but, most important, I’ve been directly involved in growing a small early-stage technology company into a significant and successful business. I can be contacted directly at [email protected]

Regular readers will understand that controversy is at least half the fun when it comes to picking out the right answers. Ajit Jaokar and Tony Fish, in their book Mobile Web 2.0, say “Content is King” is nonsense. A few years back, before the dotcom boom, financiers used to say Cash is King, and then they backed companies which made none, or very little, so we take industry dictums seriously at our peril. Jaokar and Fish though have an important point.

Considering Tony’s co-speakers include Ray Lane, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, John Battelle, Founder and Chairman of Federated Media Publishing, Bill Inmon, Vice President, Published Author and Universally Recognized as the Father of Data Warehousing and Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc – this sounds to be a very interesting conference.

For some time, I have been planning a start-up called Horizon Channel.

In October last year, I discussed the idea with Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore. This will be my third collaboration with Alan and Tomi and the chance to work with these two clued on people is very appealing ..

They both loved it. So, we decided to go for it!

We have been working on it since October and it finally launches today!

In a nutshell, Horizon channel covers trends and technologies ‘on the horizon’. It combines Podcasting (audio and video) with Wikis

The name was inspired from the National Geographic channel. And in that sense, it is not ‘User Generated Content’. Thus, in spite of all the buzz around Web 2.0, I would not call Horizon Channel as ‘Web 2.0’. Yes, we have some elements of Web 2.0 (like unleashing of content i.e. our podcasts being accessed remotely on other partner sites and through RSS) and Wikis; but the content creation itself is very much traditional.

As bloggers, all three of us are familiar with content creation; especially with content created for the web (free, but likely to be advertisement sponsored).

So, the question we asked ourselves is: As content creators what should this venture look like? How would it be useful to our audience?

Here’s what it looks like:

a) We are launching Horizon Channel with two shows: Emerging Web and Mobile technologies with Ajit Jaokar and Communities Dominate Podcast with Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen

b) What makes us different? In a nutshell, the content of our shows and the knowledge of our presenters.

And we have a great cast for the launch!

Rory Sutherland : Executive Creative Director and Vice-Chairman, OgilvyOne London and Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK giving us his views on the future of Digital communities

Jo Butler : Co-Director, Information Technology Research ISTG Group, Intel speaks to us about SOA/Web 2.0 and their applicability to Enterprises